Amazon started its cloud storage service almost a year ago and offers a free storage 5 gigabytes for all the Amazon account holders. Until now you could access your files on the Amazon cloud storage using only a web browser. But now after the introduction of desktop apps for both Google Cloud and Microsoft Skydrive, Amazon has also come up with a desktop application for Windows and Mac. This desktop app for Amazon Cloud Drive integrates with Windows Explorer and makes it easy to upload, download and manage your files on the cloud storage.

Before you can start using Amazon Cloud Drive, you need an Amazon account. If you are already an Amazon customer, then you already have an Amazon account and can just visit the Amazon Cloud Drive page to start your cloud storage account. If you are not a customer, then you can sign up for an Amazon account for free and claim your 5 gigabytes of free cloud storage account. After you have created your Amazon account, you can visit the Amazon Cloud Drive App webpage to download its Windows Desktop app. The download is around 25 megabytes and includes Oracle Java components. After the installation, you would see a window where you can login to Amazon Cloud Drive using your Amazon credentials. It also gives you options to recover your forgotten password and create a new Amazon account.

Once you have logged into your Cloud Drive account, you can start uploading or downloading files and folders. It adds a shell extension in Windows Explorer that makes it very easy for you to upload any file to your Amazon Cloud Drive. Just right-click on a file or folder and choose Send to → Amazon Cloud Drive from the context menu. This would send that file or folder to your cloud storage.

Alternatively, you can also drag and drop a file or folder on to the Amazon Cloud Drive icon in the system tray (notification area) of Windows. This will also send that file or folder to your cloud storage. If you right-click on this notification area icon, you would see a context-menu which serves the purpose of allowing you to access the Amazon Cloud Drive using your web browser. You can also open or change the download folder for your web browser using this context menu.

Unlike the Windows desktop apps for Google Cloud Drive or Microsoft Skydrive, Amazon Cloud Drive app does not sync your data between your cloud storage and a local folder on your hard disk. In fact, it does not allow you to download your files directly through the desktop app. You can open the Amazon Cloud Drive in your web browser and manually download your files.

Amazon Cloud Drive offers you a 5 gigabytes of free space. You can also upgrade your cloud storage service starting from 20 GB for US$20 per year to 1000 GB for US$1000 a year. The MP3 songs that you purchase through Amazon do not count towards your cloud storage limit. If you do not need to sync your folders and files between your computer and your cloud storage, then the desktop app for Amazon Cloud Drive is going to satisfy your needs. You can download it from its website at http://www.amazon.com/gp/drive/app-download/.